It's official-the European Union has rejected Microsoft's appeal of the 2004 anti-trust decision against the company, sustaining the $600 million fine originally levied as well as a number of other remedies including the required licensing of certain protocol information to competitors, and the requirement to make available a version (or versions-the tiered nature of Windows Vista licensing calls into question some of the details of how this may be implemented to comply with the court's directives) of Windows not bundled with Windows Media Player.

Microsoft has two months to appeal the appellate ruling, and if I imagine they probably will, unless counsel decides that it's simply outside the realm of possibility that the case could be won or at least the ruling modified. It's not so much the judgment itself that is cause for concern, but the precedent-if competitors could successfully argue that bundling WMP with the OS stifled competition, then what of any of a hundred other bundled or included applications that come with Windows? What about features that Microsoft considers a core component of the OS (a la Internet Explorer... or what about even deeper, say, the TCP/IP stack?) but for which nonetheless another product competes? It's a bit of a rabbit hole, frankly, and the level at which common sense integration conflicts with anti-competitive practice can be difficult for even the technically competent to decide, let alone a judge who may have difficulty checking his or her own e-mail.

The full text of the ruling can be found here.